How to buy a TV in 2017

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TV Buying Guide: What to look for when TV shopping

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Buying a new television is an overwhelming experience. Prices vary widely for TVs of the same size. TV manufacturers and salespeople use extra features, alien-sounding technologies and hyperbolic claims about picture quality to get you to spend more. And as usual the internet is a mess of conflicting facts, opinions and unexplained jargon.

This guide is intended as an oasis in the vast desert of information about TVs. I strive to fill it with just enough easy-to-understand information to help you select a new television. It won't answer every question, and when you read it, it won't tell you "the perfect TV for you" at the end. But I hope it can provide you with the basic tools you need to feel confident when you buy that new set.

Cut to the chase: Which TV should I buy? (Updated November 2017)

If you just want to skip all the details and buy a great television, I have a few go-to choices among 2017 TVs:

Four rules for buying a TV

1. Wait until the holidays for the best prices

Target/Best Buy/Dell

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the U.S., is best known for crazy doorbuster pricing on no-name televisions, but the fact is that just about every television gets a Black Friday price cut. And prices usually remain low through the holiday season and into the New Year.

High-end sets can see reductions of 20 to 40 percent compared to pricing during the spring, when they're first released, and even cheaper sets, which don't have as much room for discounts, often see a healthy cut too. Unless you have money to burn, it's best to wait.

2. Ignore (most of) the specifications

As a rule of thumb, the main purpose of a TV's specification sheet is to bombard you with confusing terms and numbers in an attempt to get you to "step up" and buy the more expensive version. Just about the only worthwhile numbers are found under Inputs and Weight/Dimensions.

Rather than rely on the spec sheet to provide hints on which TV will perform better than another, our advice is to simply ignore it. The sheet can help when trying to differentiate a TV based on features, such as whether it has HDR, Smart TV capability or a fancy remote, but it's useless at best and outright misleading at worst when used as a tool for divining picture quality.

3. Bigger really is better

I recommend a size of at least 40 inches for a bedroom TV and at least 55 inches for a living room or main TV -- and 65 inches or larger is best.

In fact, more than any other "feature" like 4K resolution, HDR, Smart TV or a fancy remote, stepping up in TV screen size is the best use of your money. One of the most common post-TV-purchase complaints I've heard is from people who didn't go big enough.

If you want to fit an existing entertainment center, make sure you have at least an inch on the sides and top of the TV cavity to allow for ventilation. Or just junk that old furniture and get a bigger TV.

On the other hand, 4K TVs are easy for manufacturers to produce, so they're coming down quickly in price. Vizio and TCL offer 65-inch 4K TVs for around $800 in the US, while LG and Samsung TVs sell for around $1,100. These days many TVs -- especially the big ones -- have 4K resolution, and 1080p and lower-resolution models are quickly becoming resigned to the bargain bin.

Most 4K Blu-ray discs also have HDR.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Most of the midpriced and higher-end 4K TVs this year have HDR compatibility as well. HDR delivers better contrast and color, so unlike 4K, chances are you'll actually be able to see an improvement compared with normal HDTV. How big of an improvement (if any) depends on the TV, however, and just like with 4K, you'll need to be watching actual HDR content.

4K TV shows and movies are rare today, and HDR is even less common. Streaming services like Netflix and Amazon offer both, but only with a handful of titles. You can also invest in a 4K Blu-ray player (like the Samsung UBD-K8500 or Xbox One S), which also do HDR, and discs to play on it. Actual 4K and/or HDR TV channels are still nonexistent in the United States, however.

Bottom line? All of the best TVs are 4K TVs with HDR. If you're shopping for a medium-sized or larger TV, you'll probably end up with a 4K one anyway, and chances are it'll do HDR too.

Every CNET TV review is conducted as a side-by-side comparison with up to seven other TVs.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Picture quality p's and q's

I consider the best picture quality for the money a sort of holy grail in the quest for a new TV. It's still consistently the No. 1 thing TV shoppers cite as important to their buying decision.

If you don't place as high a priority on PQ, you'll get the best value by simply sorting a list of TVs by price along with the screen size you want, choosing the cheapest from a brand you trust and calling it a day. Or at least skip to the next section of this guide.

Many people don't realize they're watching the Soap Opera Effect and might like their TV's picture quality better if they turned it off.

Poor picture settings on a good TV will usually look worse than calibrated picture settings on a crappy TV.

In sum, picture quality is more complex than just counting pixels or reading a spec sheet, and your best bet is to read reviews, such as those at CNET. Hopefully you can also get the chance to see a good TV in person along with someone who can explain why it's good.

Extras beyond picture quality

On one level, I don't consider any of these extras necessary or even all that important. On the other hand, they're often found on TVs that have better picture quality and cost more money.

Smart TV Since you can connect an inexpensive HDMI stick or box to make any TV "Smart" -- in the sense that you get access to Netflix, Amazon Instant, and the rest -- the "apps" on TVs are often redundant. That's why I want my dumb TV (or failing that, a Roku TV). Even so, your next TV will likely have Smart apps whether you use them or not.

Curved TVs In my review of the first mainstream curved LCD TV, Samsung's UNHU9000, I called the curve "a flat-out gimmick." And that was after living with one in my house for a month. The curve detracted more than it added to picture quality, and in the end seemed like more of an aesthetic choice than anything else. I don't think it's worth the extra money.

3D Once a futuristic add-on filled with promise -- remember "Avatar"? -- 3D TV is now basically dead. This year the last two major brands to support 3D, Sony and LG, dropped support entirely, joining Samsung, Vizio and most other brands.

Remote controls If you aren't planning to use a universal model or the remote that came with your cable box, pay attention to the TV's included clicker. It's nice when it can command other gear directly (especially cool is Samsung's new system) and I prefer TVs to include medium-size remotes with well-differentiated, backlit buttons. Fancy remotes with touchpads and gesture controls are nice, but a good universal model will almost always work better, consigning your included remote to ignominy in a drawer.

A good universal remote can easily retire the one included with your TV.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Connectivity This one has gotten easier as important inputs have dwindled to one kind: HDMI. Just count the number of devices you'll want to connect, and make sure your TV has at least that many HDMI ports (or one or two extra if you'll be expanding). USB inputs and/or an SD card slot are nice for displaying photos, too. You only need to worry about the analog ports if you have an older device to connect; the Nintendo Wii is the classic HDMI-free offender.

We consider HDMI 2.0 or 2.0a, HDCP 2.2 and HEVC decoding necessities on a 4K TV, but again nearly every new 4K TV has them. And you should just buy the cheap HDMI cables.

Thin styling Since TVs are basically furniture, manufacturers have concentrated on making their sets thinner and less intrusive -- see LG's "wallpaper OLED" for the most extreme example. Many TVs today have frames so thin they look like almost all picture, and when seen from the side or hung on a wall, the thin cabinets almost disappear. Unfortunately, thin LED-backlit LCDs can also introduce uniformity problems in my experience.

How important is a thin TV for you?

Sarah Tew/CNET

Frequently asked questions

What's the best TV brand? I don't have a favorite brand, instead I try to judge the TVs I test on their individual merits, ignoring brand cachet or reputation. I don't test TVs over the long term, but from what I know all of the major brands are more or less equally reliable. Some brands do perform more consistently better than others in my tests, or deliver remotes, smart TV systems or designs I prefer over competitors, but these can change on a fairly regular basis.

What's the best TV for gaming? What about sports? Trick question! I believe the best TVs for watching pretty much anything are the TVs with the best black level, color and other standard performance characteristics (not to mention the biggest screen). Motion resolution isn't a major concern since most blurring on TV sporting events is inherent in the source, and input lag, which we measure for every TV review, can often be defeated by specialized gaming modes common on most TVs.

Which HDR format is better, HDR10 or Dolby Vision? Neither one has proven better in our tests yet, but so far TVs with Dolby Vision have look better when fed Dolby Vision content. Here's a primer on the HDR format war.

Seriously, what about QLED, SUHD, Super UHD, Triluminos, Quantum Dots, UHD Alliance Premium Certified and so on? Remember when I told you to ignore the spec sheet? Still curious? Alrighty then.